Zombie Crawls
Zombie Jesus by Shannon Freshwater
People are funny. On one hand you have a dread of zombies, and on another you have the idea that zombie apocalypse is a keg party waiting to happen. Every year, in cities worldwide, people dressed as zombies meet their leader, Zombie Jesus (no, that’s not a typo), and go out drinking.
David Christman, photographer, artist, and zombie expert, explains: “The initial idea of the creators of the Philly Zombie Crawl (Melissa Torre, Dave Ghoul and Robert Drake) was to celebrate the greatest zombie of them all: Jesus Christ.”
Then the Philly crew learned that there was a Zombie Pub Crawl thriving in Minneapolis, and others popping up all over.
“We have all kinds of zombies at our crawl,” Christman says, “some that go back to the Revolutionary period! In 2006, over one hundred and twenty zombies gathered at Tattooed Mom.”
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Rabbi Shevack, an interfaith leader,3 believes that our national psyche would also be a victim of an uncontrolled zombie rampage. “Zombies would destroy the national psyche, just as they would destroy nationality itself. Most dividing lines would fall. Zombies wouldn’t care if it was American flesh or Mexican flesh. They’d eat heterosexuals or homosexuals. Neo-cons or pandering liberals would be equal entrees. All our precious politics and national agendas would be consumed, voraciously, by zombies; as the living dead, they become the living-equalizers! And the Constitution? Well, that would just be carbohydrates.”
“What would it be like to die slowly from a zombie bite?” speculates therapist Jerry Waxler. “It’s just a much speeded up version of dying from life. We all start dying the minute we’re born, and then we watch ourselves with varying degrees of self-awareness.”
That brings up an interesting point: What would it be like? In zombie fiction and film we’ve all seen characters die, slowly or quickly, from infection, but rarely is this explored from the point of view of the infected person. Author David Wellington is one of the few who takes a shot at this, and his book Monster Island has some fascinating and unnerving scenes with a doctor who is going through that process.4
“The terror would be incredible,” says Dr. Kearney. “And there would be grief, too. Not just over one’s own life coming to such a tragic end; but grief of the harm a person might do after he’s lost his fight and succumbed to the zombie infection. The fear of becoming a monster, something harmful to those we love, is a dreadful thing, but it’s very common. You see it in victims of abuse who fear that they might grow to become abusers themselves. You see it in substance abusers who, in moments of clarity, realize the actual or potential harm inherent in their actions and yet feel powerless to stop themselves from taking that next crack pipe. The fear is similar here because these people are also being gradually overwhelmed by a process of negative change. Granted, substance abuse is treatable and zombie infection, according to the movies, is not…but the psychological process has definite similarities.”
“Fear and anger toward an identifiable person/thing would be a difference,” observes Professor Ladany, “but the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance would still be there. The acceptance may not happen, however, until after the zombie state sets in. I would also suspect that the process of turning into a zombie may involve a change in personality such that dominant personality styles become exaggerated (for better or worse). For example, an angry person may become more angry, an extroverted person may become more extroverted, etc.”
Dr. Gretz observes, “I think it would depend upon their religious beliefs and personal strength. If I knew I were dying and would become a threat to people around me after my death I would be emotionally distraught. However, if I were dying and knew that preparations had been made to eliminate that threat to others (such as destruction of my body after death), I would probably go through the same six steps common to all dying from denial to anger, to acceptance, etc.”
“Grief,” agrees Dr. Kearney, “would be a constant and terrible presence in all our lives. It would be its own kind of plague.”
“Usually, grief is a very private thing,” says Gretz. “We attend funerals and wakes to share our grief with others and to support the grieving. However, there are many people who find it extremely difficult to attend such events or even visit people in the hospital because of mortality issues. While grief is generally private; we don’t expect strangers to attend the funerals of loved ones. However in national crises like a 9/11, a Pearl Harbor, the great influenza epidemics, there is a sense that ‘we are all in this together.’ Following WWI and the great influenza epidemic that killed more people than the war itself, everyone either lost someone in their family or knew someone who had. There was a great sense of vulnerability and an awareness of one’s own mortality. At the same time, I think that many people finally entered a mild state of denial. Think of the Cold War—when I was a young child we had practice ‘duck and cover’ exercises in school in case of a nuclear attack. This was particularly true around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis when everyone thought the end was right around the corner. By the time I finished high school, we didn’t even talk about it. College students were actually praising all things Russian and Che Guevara was a national hero on US campuses.”
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Afterlife
Award-winning author Douglas Clegg shares his views on our obsession with the risen dead. “We’re fascinated by the physical body and what happens after death to it. Additionally, with zombies, there’s the sense of the dumb, destructive crowd out there that’s going to somehow drive us insane or destroy us—sort of like the guy in Munch’s painting, The Scream, with the world all around him while he exists in his own nightmare.”
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Horror of the Dead
“What could be more intimately awful than the most familiar person in our lives actually becoming something both unfamiliar and dangerous? It’s horrifying. Thus fascinating. I remember seeing Dawn of the Dead for the first time as a teenager, and actually relating to the woman (near the beginning of the film) who sees her dead relative walking about and is overjoyed to find him ‘alive’—only to be attacked and then partially devoured. Gah! It doesn’t get much more horrific than that.”—Stephen Mark Rainey, author of Blue Devil Island (Thomson Gale/Five Star Books, 2007)
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The Zombie Factor
When asked how this applies to zombies, Gretz says, “I think a zombie plague might be dealt with similarly. In locales where there were actual outbreaks, those people who saw one would become hyper vigilant—possibly to the extent that there might be real psychological damage. However, in areas where none had been seen, many would simply deny their existence and any danger (especially if admitting the danger would cause them any real inconvenience). As in most grief situations, I think religion would become increasingly important, both philosophically to explain what was happening and psychologically to help people deal with it. ‘There are no atheists in a foxhole’ would apply on a national level—remember how church attendance spiked during WWII and after 9/11; and I’m told that most of the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan attend services whenever they can.”
And he makes a final point: “There is one more complication; during the flu epidemic, people often avoided wakes and funerals for fear of catching the flu—many of those who did attend did catch it and died. With a zombie plague, initial responses might be (1) how do I know you’re not a zombie, (2) could I catch the plague from you or whatever, or even, (3) what sin did you commit for God to punish you in this way? And that will do a completely different kind of damage to our culture and our minds.”
JUST THE FACTS
Death and Undeath
What is it about dying that so deeply terrifies people? Considering that most people have, or claim to have, religious or spiritual beliefs that promise paradise after death and an end to all human suffering, it would seem that death should be welcome rather than railed against.
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p; Expert Witness
“People are obsessed with death because it is the one thing they cannot at all control,” says Rabbi Michael Shevack. “They can delay it, dance around it, and maybe, at times, detour themselves away from it. But, death is totally inevitable and we are all face to face with the ultimate irony of life, that we are ‘born to die.’ We fear it because we can’t control it, and we can’t control it, so we fear it. Death renders us powerless. Like the famous poem by Shelley, ‘Ozymandias,’ we are reduced to rubble, no matter how exalted our accomplishments and egos. The fear of death is what causes the obsession with death, which includes all sorts of religious paraphernalia and psychological-projective symbols as well as a tremendous amount of cravings for it—death voyeurism—I would call it. We ritualize our fear to expiate it. And in the Jewish and Christian traditions death is always associated with sin, which is considered the cause of it. If we are born to die, it is because we have sinned in some fashion. So, there is moral-fear, and retributive-fear heaped upon its already fearful nature.”
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Chronicling the Apocalypse with David Moody
“Romero has always been my main influence. I love the bleakness and hopelessness of his stories. He concentrates as much on the living as the dead, which is something that too few zombie film-makers and writers do. Without any human involvement, zombie stories just become relentless bloodbaths.
“I have a fascination with post-apocalyptic stories and it was a natural progression for me to write an ‘end-of-the-world’ zombie novel. The Autumn story gave me an opportunity to look at zombies in a new light and take a different approach to everything I’d seen and read before.
“My other influences are more horror-specific than zombie-specific: the films of David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, Peter Jackson (before Lord of the Rings) and Roger Corman have all had a huge effect on my books. Cronenberg in particular. In films like The Fly, Shivers, Rabid, Videodrome and The Brood he looked at the disintegration of ‘normal’ human beings and their becoming something else entirely. That’s one of the themes that runs through the whole Autumn series—what a so-called normal person at the beginning of the story goes through to turn them into a cold lump of hate-filled rotting flesh at the end?”—David Moody, author of the Autumn novels (Infected Press)
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Dr. Gretz observes, “People have always wondered what happens after death. Like the old Peggy Lee song, ‘Is this all there is?’” we wonder what’s next. As children, we are often frightened of the dark and the unknown. Most religions answer that question with possibilities of endless light and joy or endless darkness and despair. I think the television news and the current round of increasingly violent movies and video games has also played a part. On the one hand, they bring death right into our everyday lives. Unfortunately, they also make it unreal to us. It is something that happens to others and isn’t totally real because we play the same game tomorrow with the same characters. The actor who is killed in one show is in another next week. Until about fifty years ago, most children attended at least one wake and funeral for a family member, neighbor or friend before they finished grade school. People died at home rather than in the hospital and they were washed and prepared for burial at home. Only the wealthy could afford embalming. So children grew up watching loved ones slip away. They had time to say their good-byes before or after the person died and they watched as the body/casket was lowered into the ground, giving them closure. Today, we try to protect children from all that—violent movies, TV shows and video games notwithstanding, and children often never gain that closure. The result is often not only a fascination with death but also an unhealthy fear of it.”
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Zombie Porn
Zombie Love Slave by Kevin Breaux
Over the last thirty years there has been a sub-(sub-, sub-)-genre of the living dead cinema in which zombies and their victims engage in hard-core sex. Redeeming value: zip, except as a statement of sorts about the true meaning of freedom of speech. Where these could have been fun, too many of them are fiercely (indeed, savagely) antifemale, showing not just violence against women, which has always been something of a staple in horror storytelling, but deliberate degradation, humiliation, and torture. These elements do not advance the story toward some meaningful turnaround or social statement: They are the story.
Good writers can include torture and other ghastly crimes (abuse, rape, murder) in a story and use the shock value to steer the story toward some understanding of the way in which the mind warps and the human spirit fractures. Romero did this in his films, letting the violence act as a conduit toward insight into greater social problems. Most of the zombie porn reveled in the connection between sex and humiliating death.
The kings of these films were Joe D’Amato (real name Aristide Massaccesi), who churned out trash like Porno Holocaust and Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (both 1980); and Claude Pierson, who inflicted Naked Lovers (a.k.a. Porno Zombies) on the world in 1977.
In 1982 director Mario Sicilano attempted to legitimize the genre by focusing more on the sex and far less on the misogynistic violence with Erotic Orgasm, but the damage was done.
Some of this stuff has surfaced on DVD, mostly bootleg, and with any luck it’ll sink back into the unmarked grave from which it came.
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Dr. Ladany says, “Existentialists would argue that all anxiety is based on a fear of death and that people create fantasies or religions as a way to deal with, or distract themselves from the fact that we will die and there is nothing left afterwards. I don’t completely agree with existentialists, however, I think people are intrigued by death because it offers an alternative to the suffering that takes place for people. Almost everyone experiences suffering on a day-to-day basis and the idea of death offers an escape plan.”
The Zombie Factor
Zombie films and books have done a thorough job of exploring the different phases of psychological and spiritual disintegration that is likely during an undead attack. We’ve seen the gamut of human emotions, from heroism to cowardice, from self-sacrifice to murderous selfishness, from generosity to greed, and from wisdom to folly. And it isn’t just film and novels that have been used to explore the topic; comics, short stories, and art also get their say, and in these forms some of the most powerful insights are presented.
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Zombie Anthologies
Greg Schauer, owner of Between Books in Claymont, Delaware, provides a list of the absolute essential anthologies:
The Dead Collections edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector:
–The Book of the Dead (Bantam, 1989)
–Book of the Dead 2: Still Dead (1992)
The Mammoth Book of Zombies edited by Stephen Jones (Carroll & Graf Publishing, 1993)
The Ultimate Zombie edited by Byron Preiss (Dell, 1993)
The Flesh Anthologies edited by James Lowder
–The Book of All Flesh (Eden Studios, 2001)
–The Book of More Flesh (2002)
–The Book of Final Flesh (2003)
The Undead: Zombie Anthology edited by Brian Keene (Permuted Press, 2005)
History Is Dead edited by Kim Paffenroth (Permuted Press, 2007)
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Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead tells of a group of survivors on the run: friends, family, and strangers smashed together by events and forced to redefine “civilized behavior” on a day-today basis. These black-and-white comics published by Dark Horse allow us to see the psychodynamics played out with more depth and complexity than any film can manage in two hours. Even a 400-page novel would have a hard time plumbing as many depths as Kirkman has in the hundreds of illustrated pages that comprise the series. The stark visuals give us the backdrop and set the scenes and allow the storytelling to be lean and hungry.
Short stories (the best ones anyway) have always been mini-dramas, allowing more room for experimentation than novels or films. You can take more risks in 5,000 words than you can
in 100,000. If it flubs, very little of the publishing industry’s money is wasted, and if it’s successful, it drives sales of everything else in the genre. The 1988 anthology Book of the Dead (Bantam) edited by John Skipp and Craig Specter is widely considered to be the gold standard, and not just because of the caliber of writers (Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Joe R. Lansdale, etc.) but because of the inventiveness of the stories. This was a raw book, with stories that took chunks out of the reader; it was frightening and heartbreaking and often damn funny. The only thing it was not was forgettable.
And as for art…scattered throughout the book you’re holding are dozens of pictures from artists around the world. Professionals and amateurs are drawn to the world of the dead through some fascination or compulsion, each with its own deeply emotional story to tell. Look at the pictures, read what the artists had to say, and see where your mind wanders. Each one of these took me to a different, shadowy and important place in my head.